Tag: Mars Orbiter Mission

Today India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft arrived at Mars and was successfully placed into orbit. Launched 5th November, 13 days before NASA’s Maven the spacecraft, it took a slightly different route to Mars resulting in it arriving three days after MAVEN. This is the first spacecraft from India to travel this far from Earth and it performed it’s orbit insertion as planned and is now in orbit of Mars.

India are only the fourth entity to place an craft into orbit of Mars following NASA, ESA and Soviet Union. To add to the achieve they are the only one two achieve orbit on the very first attempt.

Like this:

A lot has happened in Space or related to Space recently and the future is looking very bright.

Below is a summary of some of the recent news and upcoming events.

SpaceX and Boeing awarded CCtCap contracts – We now have two companies contracted to build manned spacecraft to deliver crew to the ISS. Currently only two other countries have the ability to do this. See my full article on the awards here.

ULA and Blue Origin announce BE-4 engine – Following pressure from various sources ULA have announced they are going to partner with Blue Origin to build the engine which will allow them to move away from the Russian RD-180 engine for Atlas. Full article include specs can be found here.

Mars Orbiters arriving soon – This Sunday NASA’s Mars Maven orbiter will be arriving at the planet and next Wednesday India’s Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft is also expected to arrive. They will join three other orbiters currently at Mars and the two active Rovers on the surface.

ESA Rosetta Lander Philae has a landing site – The European Space Agency has announced the landing site for Philae which is part of the Rosetta mission. This will be the first time a vehicle has landed on the surface of a Comet. For more information on the mission check out the excellent ESA Blog for Rosetta.

First 3D Printer heading to space – Early tomorrow morning SpaceX’s CRS-4 mission is scheduled to lift off, on board will be the first 3D printer to go into space. The possibilities this opens up for the future are immeasurable. For more information on the printer check out this page. We will be posting an update tomorrow morning following the launch of CRS-4.